I was a pre-school teacher when I was expecting my little artist Ethan. It was always my intention to continue teaching and remain in the working force. All that changed the moment I laid hand on my baby in the Operating Theatre. I submitted my resignation and vowed to be the best mother a mom can be to my son. I live with this mantra in my head – “A parent is a child’s first teacher”.

My love for art and crafts helps create that special bond between Ethan and I. We started crafting together when he was 12 months old and it helps in his motor and fine skills development tremendously. Initially we’ll hang up his masterpieces in the Art Room in the house. Overtime, we ran out of walls.

That is when crafty-crafted.com was born; to immortalize his artwork and also to share our ideas with other mommies out there. That was 3 years ago.

A week ago, we finally got ourselves a colour printer. We chose a HP colour inkjet printer. I need not limit his creativity to only water paint and crayons anymore. He can now print out stuffs that he created online.

For a start, with the Chinese New Year around the corner Ethan did his first printing craftwork.

Personalised Ang Pow Packet

He personalised his very own red packets to be given to his grandparents. Let’s have a look at how he does it 😀

A+ #1 – First, choose a picture of the person you are giving the Ang Pow to. This is easily done by stalking their Facebook account 😛 I helped Ethan to get the pictures of my nieces from my sisters’ FB account and saved them in my PC.

A+ #2 – Ethan chose the pictures that he likes best and starts printing. Mind you, he did it all by himself as shown in the video at the end of this post!

I made some beautiful ball lanterns and many have requested for me to share the steps here.

Red Packet Ball Lantern

Gold Packet Ball Lantern

I found it very difficult to explain it with pictures but I found this video instead. Let’s watch this video and I’m sure you’ll be able to make your very own beautiful ball lantern using red packets 😀

A friend of mine requested me to make it round, like a ball without those spikes. What you need to do is just follow the steps shown in the video, and after you are done, just fold the spikes and staple them.

First, make sure all 18 ang pows are sealed. Some ang pow came with self adhesive, some don’t. For those that do not have self adhesive, use some glue to seal off the ang pows.

Fold the all 18 ang pow slightly into half at the top and bottom. Do not fold the whole ang pow until there is a straight line, only fold for a tiny marking.

Fold all 18 ang pows at the corners.

Stapler 2 top corners of 2 ang pows together. Stapler another 2 more ang pows to form the fish body like the picture above. You will need to make 2 of these shape.

Stapler all the side together to form the fish body.

Fold 2 ang pows into halves. Arrange the ang pows just like the picture shown above and stapler them together.

Stapler the mouth piece to the body piece as shown in the picture.

Fold 2 ang pows into halves. Stapler one of the folded ang pow on the top of the fish body as shown. Stapler the other folded ang pow into the fin. Repeat the fish fins instruction for the bottom side of the fish body.

Fold the rest of the ang pows into halves, there should be 4 ang pows left. Take 2 ang pows and stapler them as shown above. Do the same for the rest of the ang pows. Stapler one tail onto the body of the fish first, then stapler the second one.

Put a string through the top fin of your fish and hang it. Your lantern is done 🙂